pop3fandomcom-20200223-history
Talk:Order of the Griffon/@comment-32797491-20180129211943/@comment-45075715-20200219023753
>> and phoenixes have probably best weapons since they have longest broadswords of all orders Weapon speed totally beats weapon reach in the hands of the AI in my tests even when mounted (I tried all sorts of experiments using CKOs to find what is optimal) or I might even say especially when mounted. The AI isn't all that smart about using mounts to hit and run (very often they charge into even a single infantry unit and collide and stop). With fast weapon like the ebony knight sword, the AI attacks so quickly that they can quickly slice their way out of those situations -- especially situations where they find themselves crowded and need to cut a path through to resume riding with the horse. With slower weapon and long reach, they tend to get stuck more and often get killed doing it. Give them a fast weapon and they attack like they're on drugs and connect left and right while the DPS goes through the roof. It's also a big part of what makes D'Shar scorpion assassins so lethal in my opinion -- all the swords they can spawn with have 110+ attack speed. Also Demonic Magnus -- the versions that spawn with Strange Ebony Saber (fastest weapon they can spawn with even though the reach is only 105) tend to cut through your troops much, much faster than the ones with dire axe or two-handed saber. Even though the reach on the dire axe and two-handed saber are much greater along with the damage, they still end up killing way faster with the lowest-damage and lowest-reach but fastest weapon (the strange one-handed saber) they spawn with. You see demonic magnus wielding those and their attack speed is berserk and you don't want your troops near them. Weapon speed beats all in the hands of the AI as I see it. The AI on mounts still miss a lot like idiots making crude swings at an enemy in front or behind their mounts rather than to the side, but they do that and still miss almost as often even with the longest-reach weapons. I also suspect with medium reach that they increase the chances of their connected attacks hitting the enemy optimally in a way that maximizes damage (down the center of the weapon arc and attack animation). You can also observe that sorta in tourneys with two-handed vs. 1-handed tournament swords. When the AI is mounted, they seem to kill slightly faster with the faster one-handed wooden sword than two-handed even though they shouldn't since the one-handed sword might offer them a shield as well, although they seem to do better with two-handed on foot against mounts. In player hands reach seems more optimal to hit and run and avoid opening ourselves to melee counterattack while carefully timing a swing or thrust to hit optimally with speed bonuses and down the center of the arc and attack animation, but the AI is sort of dumb and seems optimized to use medium-reach weapons with fastest speed. I even find that sacrificing a good amount of damage rating on the weapon and not just reach in exchange for speed still makes them far more effective at killing faster within a fairly generous threshold (like sacrificing -30% damage in exchange for +10% speed, or -25% reach in exchange for +10% speed). I suspect one of the reasons besides attack animations is that it wastes less damage output. It's like in a shooter game, using a slow-firing rifle that deals 100 damage but takes a second per shot on an enemy with 40 HP wastes over half the damage output that could have been spread to other enemies. This can especially apply to AI since the AI is typically much faster than a human at selecting a new target and registering when the existing target has died. Meanwhile a machine gun that shoots 4 times times per second at 20 damage, even though that's 80 DPS instead of 100 DPS, might still get more effective damage throughput and kill enemies faster especially with an AI that isn't all that careful with selecting its targets and making the most of each shot. Assuming no misses, it also kills 40 HP enemies in half a second with that machine gun as opposed to a full second with the rifle which might make it less vulnerable to receiving exchange fire and help it survive longer on top of killing faster. If there are misses, the cost in time of a miss is far greater with the rifle with more wasted damage output again. Lots of games with an attack speed mechanic tend to work this way and favor AS over other attack properties unless it's countered by something else (ex: armor piercing on the slower weapons/attacks). The faster but lower-damage and even slightly lower-DPS weapons still get the highest effective damage throughput and still the highest effective DPS even if they don't have the highest DPS on paper just multiplying numbers without factoring in wasted damage from misses and overkilling enemies. The slower but higher-damage weapons do offer an initiative bonus in that they can take a single enemy down faster on first shot if it's one-hit-kill, but the recovery time still wastes a lot of damage output and time if there's more than one enemy being faced. In practice I find that initiative bonus isn't enough of an exchange typically in AI hands (it might be utilized better by a smarter player that fires once and takes cover immediately) unless it is an actual 1vs1 scenario. Also, I am not 100% sure of this but it looks like +10% weapon speed in M&B doesn't translate to a measly 10% boost in attack speed. I could be wrong but just looking at the increased speed of animations, I suspect something is multiplied there with weapon profs or something to make each point in a weapon's speed rating have closer to an exponential increase in terms of increasing attack speed instead of a linear increase. I could be wrong but 50 weapon speed doesn't seem like it makes the attack animation only take twice as long as 100 weapon speed. It seems to be more like 3+ times as long, but that's just based on eyeballing. In particular speed ratings above 100 seem to make quite a difference in my eyes, like there appears to be a much larger difference in attack speed between 100 weapon speed and 110 weapon speed -- much more than the numbers might suggest -- especially with the AI (although maybe it's not due to attack animation speed but how they feint attacks -- it might make it much faster for the AI to cancel a feint and follow up with the real attack -- either way I don't like facing AI with fast weapons very much and they also tend to cut through troops like butter).